I wondered this, too. I think the emphasis here was on the faster / lower costs models, but that would suggest that Haiku 4.5 should be the Anthropic entry on the table instead. They also did not use the most powerful xAI model either, instead opting for the fast one. Regardless, this new Gemini 3 Flash model is good enough that Anthropic should be feeling pressure on both price and model output quality simultaneously regardless of which Anthropic model is being compared against, which is ultimately good for the consumer at the end of the day.
I wondered this, too. I think the emphasis here was on the faster / lower costs models, but that would suggest that Haiku 4.5 should be the Anthropic entry on the table instead. They also did not use the most powerful xAI model either, instead opting for the fast one. Regardless, this new Gemini 3 Flash model is good enough that Anthropic should be feeling pressure on both price and model output quality simultaneously regardless of which Anthropic model is being compared against, which is ultimately good for the consumer at the end of the day.